Today we had the privilege of having Matua Busby come into our school and lead our tamariki in some new waiata for Kapa haka.
It was interesting for me to hear the variation in the haka powhiri, for instance I am used to hearing “Hi ha, hi” before the call of “Toia Mai” (te waka). Matua Busby’s version adds in another “ha”, meaning it is chanted “Hi ha, hi ha… Toia Mai”. Next time I hope to ask him about whether this variation is due to regional difference (Auckland compared to the Waikato where I grew up). I found a link to a version similar to Matua’s here.
Hearing the familiar chants it was like second nature to begin the actions for Toia Mai, even though it has been a few years since my last kapa haka performance. After the practise I went over the words of the Ka Mate haka with my class as I had noticed a slight error in their pronunciation of the words, they were saying “hupane, hupane” instead of “upane, ka upane”, which is what Matua had taught them, but because of the bad acoustics in the hall the students struggled to hear him correctly. We also had a discussion about what the words meant in English, and I briefly talked about the legend behind how this was composed.
Learning Through Teaching 